I am sitting on a plane and it is now an hour and fifteen minutes past our scheduled departure time and we have missed our connecting flight…I am really not a pessimist but this is not a good start. The plan was Redmond to Portland to Amsterdam to Istanbul with an overnight in Istanbul. From there I booked a separate flight from Istanbul to Addis. I am getting the feeling this may be a bumpy trip. This feeling has been reinforced by the difficulty we’ve had making reservations and the fact that we are sitting in the very back of the plane and one of the in-seat screens does not work. Send good thoughts our way that we can get this rebooked.

For the first time in my life I feel reluctant to travel. I should be over the moon excited to go meet my daughter; instead all I can focus on is that we will be coming home without her. Yes, I know she will come home but that will be at least four months from now. If we can swing it we are still planning on going and staying in Addis prior to our embassy date but how long we will be able to do this is uncertain. The airfare was just so expensive for this trip.

We made it to Amsterdam and found out that we were rebooked on a flight to Istanbul later that night. So, with a nine hour layover we started to figure out how to kill time. After getting our new tickets and meal voucher we found out the hotel had a Yotel Motel. I had read about this a few years ago and got a chance to try it out. The Yotel is a series of small rooms with a convertible bed, shower, bathroom, and tv that you can rent. The minimum number of hours is four but you can add on more hours if you want. Unfortunately, it was a bit spendy so we just went with the four hours. It was lovely to get horizontal for a few hours.

Yotel Motel

Shower

Ahh....the bed.

Jeff sat next to an American working in Istanbul and had a great time chatting with him on the flight from Amsterdam to Istanbul. He had experienced a similar delay to ours while bringing his son back to Istanbul. He was kind enough to give us a lift to our hotel. We were both grateful since it was 1am by the time we got out of the airport. Starting to feel like things are looking up (maybe I’m just less hormonal!)